Struggle in the Steam Age

The first trade between the islands in the southeast of the Star Sea headed by New Sauer Island and the northern archipelago headed by Green Island greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of these nobles and lords on Green Island.

Because for this group of nobles who have been struggling on the northern ice sheet before, this trade is the only good way to turn them over in a short period of time.

Therefore, stimulated by a bright future that can benefit generations of people, those nobles have taken out their money and hired professionals from all walks of life to conduct large-scale exploration in the area.

In addition to some of these prospectors come from the core forces of the lord and nobles, there is also a large part of these nobles who are hired from outside the island through their personal connections.

Taking into account the timeliness, the nobles did not launch their own network to find people in the old continent, but directly issued tasks and recruited people from the countries of the new continent.

And taking advantage of this opportunity, Viscount Surrey also made a small profit. Because his territory is located exactly in the middle of the Green Island, and it is also the only large human settlement and landing point on the hundreds of kilometers of coastline.

Under this circumstance, Fort Surrey, as the largest distribution center for personnel and materials in this area, has naturally formed a large market. With the arrival of various professionals and materials and the passage of time, exploration work has also been fully rolled out.

In a short period of time, news about the discovery of new specialties came from almost all territories.

Obviously, after voluntarily sending professional prospectors, these nobles' investigation results of the entire territory within a week or two may exceed those of the previous years or even more than ten years. That's why they were able to find many new specialties in such a short period of time.

Soon, the samples of those new specialties were sent to Lawrence Surreyburg with a survey report on the expected annual output. Then he made the final identification to see how much of it could be used for trade. Supplies.

Taking into account a series of factors such as the population, topography and the cost and difficulty of production on the island, even if these specialties have a certain value, not all of them are suitable for trading commodities.

To give the simplest example, a lord in the north found silver ore with a decent content in the mountainous area of ​​his territory, and the record indicated that the scale of this silver mine was not too small.

Lawrence was a little excited when he first saw the silver ore, because in his impression, many desolate places attracted a large number of people and the cornerstone of their development was the excavation of various precious metal mines.

For example, in Lawrence's impression, there were many cities in the world in his previous life that were relatively desolate in nature but developed in the end. And if you want to investigate carefully, you will find that they are almost all related to resource extraction.

For example, a series of cities in Xianbei Liya that were built with the help of coal mines, natural gas mines and even diamond mines. Another example is the series of large port cities in North America that developed because of gold mines.

But after carefully reading the investigation report and checking the silver ore samples sent, Lawrence reluctantly rejected the possibility of developing silver ore.

Because after he comprehensively considered the grade of silver ore, the scale of the entire silver mine and the difficulty of mining. Realize that if you want to develop this silver mine, the profit is likely to be very small, and even if there is an accident, it is not impossible to lose money.

The reason for this situation is also very simple, because the silver mine is not very large, and it is located in a mountainous area with complex terrain more than 100 kilometers from the coastline.

To make matters worse, the entire area is farther north than Fort Surrey, and the mountainous area where the mineral is located is filled with snow and ice all year round, so the cost of mining is huge.

Compared with the high difficulty of mining and the mining cost far exceeding the normal silver mine, the silver ore grade and reserves of this silver mine are not much dazzling.

Although the grade of these silver ore is considered to be middle-to-high, according to the clergy of the Church of the Mother Earth, the amount of silver metal in the entire mining area is about 300 tons, and the reserves are not considered to be large at all.

This silver mine is also accompanied by lead-zinc mines, but even if you add more than 10,000 tons of lead and more than 7,000 tons of zinc, you may not even be able to make money back.

"Since the staff of the Mother Earth Church said this is not feasible, what did this lord send this thing for?" Looking at the statistics on the front of the report, Lawrence shook his head in confusion.

Because the first few pages of the report have clearly stated the level of minerals in this area and the difficulty of mining, considering that the person who made the report is a priest of the Mother Earth Church, this conclusion can basically be regarded as the final conclusion.

However, there must be a reason why this document could be sent to Lawrence, so after adjusting his mood, he continued to read it.

Sure enough, the lord proposed a solution on the last pages of this article.

"Building an east-west railway to connect the east and west coasts of the island, and at the same time make the entire silver mine an important node in the middle of the railway."

"It's either a genius or a madman who can come up with this idea." After looking at the solution attached at the end of this analysis report, Lawrence sighed slightly and expressed his admiration from the heart to the person who asked the question.

For the island of Green Island, the railway, especially the east-west railway in the north of the island, is actually very necessary to build.

Let alone the huge area of ​​this island, as one of the subarctic archipelagoes, the northern icing phenomenon of the green island and these northern islands allows an east-west railway in the northern part of the island to connect the east and west sides of the entire island. The proposal has existential value.

Because of the ice accumulation in the north, it is very difficult for people on the east and west coasts of the island to communicate with each other in the north. They only have two options to get from the east coast to the west coast:

Either choose to circle the entire island halfway from the south, or you can only choose to cross the northern wilderness with a dog or dwarf horse drawn on a sled.

Obviously, this approach is not conducive to traffic on the island or outside the island. At the same time, because of the excessive cold, there is no non-seasonal river, which causes inconvenience to inland traffic. Therefore, most of the land developed by the nobles are coastal.

On the whole, this is naturally inconvenient for the development of the entire island, especially for the development of inland areas.

For example, this is the case with the nobleman who proposed to develop silver mines. He is also a viscount. At the same time, because the territory is more north, it has a larger territory area.

But from the perspective of territorial value, except for a short stretch of coastline that can be used for fishing and hunting very few otters, this northern territory can be said to be extremely barren.

But if you want to choose a road that crosses the north of the island~www.ltnovel.com~ his territory can be a very good alternative because of its flatness.

Yes, there are flatter places in the north. But even if you don't consider the area farther north is almost deserted, it is inconvenient to use after the road is built. Only those problems in the frozen soil layer in the north can not be solved by the current technical level.

Therefore, in order to avoid asking for trouble, normal people will inevitably choose an area as far north as possible geographically, but will definitely not have a frozen soil layer that is difficult to build buildings to build this passage.

This is why the Viscount proposed to build a railway at the end of the article. It can be said that the previous report on the silver mine was just an introduction to attract everyone's attention.

In fact, compared to mining a silver mine that is not economically meaningful, the real purpose of this viscount’s report is not for this.

The reason why he wants to submit this report is because after exploration, he found that the local terrain is suitable for building a road, so he hopes to persuade others to decide to build a road around his territory that can make the entire territory rich for a long time. Traffic road.